Ken Berwitz
I was just reading a list of particularly dumb quotes from media personalities, and came across a quote from Chris Matthews* – which left me shaking my head in disbelief that even Matthews – who has become a paradigm of nutty commentary – would say it.
Last May, while reporting about a fatal Amtrak train derailment near Philadelphia, Matthews actually said this to his guests, Rep. Brady and Rep. Boyle (both D-PA):
“Let\’s talk about the track.You take the train every night home. And you take it too, as well. You know howit\’s rickety. You know it jumps around a lot. It\’s like the Wild West, someparts of that route. Do we need to have a better right-of-way? Can we clear astraight line for this train? How fast can a train go if it\’s going like this?
“We have a country wherepeople can complain. In communist countries like China, they just draw astraight line, whether it goes through your house or not, it\’s a straight line.We have this Amtrak, I\’ve been taking it for a half a century, it doesn\’t go ina straight line. In this case, it tried to make a turn and turned over, becausethere\’s so many turns on that route. How do you get rid of the turns?”
FYI: The derailment occurred when the train took that turn at 106 miles per hour instead of the 50 it was supposed to.
Think that might have had something to do with the derailment?
A few questions for Chris “put it in a straight line and go through your house” Matthews: Have you ever heard of homeowner\’s rights? The concept of a railroad not running through a residential development? Not requiring that an apartment building or office building be torn down?
Have you ever heard of mountains? Bodies of water? Uneven or marshy terrain that would not support the weight of a train? Or other topographical factors which just might have some effect on whether train tracks would go in a straight line?
Matthews\’ comment is right up there with the stunning question Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked Admiral Willard, our Commander of the Pacific Command, years ago, regarding deployment of more troops and their families to Guam:
“My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize“
When that happened, I laughed in amazement over what a beyond-dumb question Johnson had asked.
But tell me, how different in, er, “quality” it was from Matthews\’ comment about Amtrak?
Not for nothing do I call him Chrazy Chris.
Oh, one other thing: Hank Johnson asked that idiot\’s-delight question about Guam on March 25th, 2010. Since then, his congressional district has re-elected him three times. This is the same district that, previously, elected the lunatic-left, anti-Semitic Cynthia McKinney to congress.
That\’s some district they have there…..
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*I am blogging about this almost 8 months after the fact only because, until now, I was unaware of what Matthews said. If I had been aware, I, of course, would have done so at the time.
